This has gotten under the skin of the other member nations in the International Space Station project, most vocally NASA. The reason is that Russian resources that were once slated for the ISS are now being used to restore Mir, subjecting the ISS project to some severe delays. I find the deal a little sketchy too, in that RKK Energia, the Russian Spacecontractor that is leasing the rights to Mir to MirCorp, also owns 60% of MirCorp.

Number update: According to Mir's home page, the station has now made over 81,000 trips around the world.

The Spektr module was attached to the Mir in 1995 and was designed
mainly for atmospheric and surface research.
The module generated about half of the electrical power of the
station, until the accident in June 1997. Currently the module
has been depressurized and isolated from the station.

MIR is now gone, on March 23, 2001 it re-entered the Earth's atmosphere above Fiji with the majority of the debris landing in the planned landing zone between New Zealand and South America.

The station was deliberately deorbited because Russia can no longer afford to operate it. For the last portion of it's life it depended on the Space Shuttle to help deliver supplies and modules. With the Shuttle being used mainly to build the International Space Station, Russia could not afford to build enough Progress and Soyuz space craft to support MIR as well as the ISS.

Even had they been able to do so, the station was requiring ever more maintenance to keep operational, and eventually would have had to be decommisioned anyhow. (The base block, with most of the life support, guidance and control equipment was orbited in 1986, and only had a planned five year life.)